te Progress ’* front ctn 
[November, 
650 
questions openly maintain that where the rights or the inte- 
rests of the individual man come in collision with those of 
the community, the latter must give way. They sacrifice 
thus the complete animal to some cellule of its body, en- 
couraging in the latter a mutinous local vitality, — a disease 
process. How utterly different is this procedure from the 
order of Nature ! She sacrifices with little scruple number- 
less individuals in her attempts to raise the type. They, 
fancying perhaps all the while that they are obeying her 
guidance, are ever ready to damage community, race, species 
itself, for the convenience of the individual. 
3. The commonest error on the subject of “ progress ” is 
the supposition — tacit, if not stated in so many words — that 
every change, every departure from what at present exists, 
must be for the better. 
Leaving out of sight those transformations, already no- 
ticed, which in the individual lead to death, we find innu- 
merable instances to the contrary, both in the early life of 
individuals and still more in the career of species. Dege- 
neration, as has been shown by Prof. E. Ray Lankester, and 
by Prof. Dohrn, of Naples, has played a very marked part 
in the genesis of species as we now have them. Thus almost 
all the parasites, external or internal, are degraded forms 
whose forefathers, more highly organised, once led an inde- 
pendent existence. Thus the various species of lice are 
supposed, on good grounds, to have once been hemipterous 
inserts whose wings have become abortive, and whose 
structure has in other respedts grown ruder and lower. The 
fleas are in the same manner degenerated Diptera. 
The parasitic group of Crustaceans commonly known as 
Epizoa are in their earlier stage capable of locomotion, and 
possess eyes and antennae. When mature they lose their 
organs of motion and sensation, and become permanently 
attached to the skin of fishes, &c. Here, therefore, the 
mature animal is lower, simpler than it was in the larval 
condition. 
Even in species which perhaps upon the whole are higher 
than were their remote forefathers, some organs are gene- 
rally found to be in a degenerated condition. 
Thus Nature continually gives the lie to the assumption 
that all change is in an upward, forward direction. Her 
transformations sometimes end in converting an adtive 
sensitive creature into a “ barnacle,” — ridiculed by those 
who do not know its life-history as the very type of “ stand- 
stillism ” and anti-progress ! 
